Living to Please God

1As to what remains therefore, my brethren, we intreat and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received instructions from us, how ye ought to walk and to please God, ye would abound therein more and more. 2For ye know what commandments we gave you from the Lord Jesus. 3For this is the will of God, even your sanctification: that ye should abstain from fornication, 4and that every one of you should possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, 5not in the passion of lust, like the heathens who know not God. 6That no one over-reach, or wrong his brother in any thing: because the Lord is an avenger of all such crimes, as we also told you before, and testified to you. 7For God hath not called us to impurity, but to holiness. 8He therefore who rejecteth us, rejecteth not man, but God; who hath given us his holy Spirit.

9But as to brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. 10And indeed ye do it to all the brethren, that are in all Macedonia; but we exhort you, brethren, to abound in it more and more: 11and endeavour to be quiet, and mind your own affairs, and work with your own hands, 12as we gave you in charge, that ye may walk decently toward those that are without, and may have need of no one's assistance.

The Return of the Lord

13But I would not have you ignorant, my brethren, concerning those that are fallen asleep, that ye may not be grieved like others who have no hope: 14for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those, that sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him. 15For this we tell you in the word of the Lord, that we who shall be living and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not be before those that are asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with acclamation, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; 17then we who are living and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we for ever be with the Lord. 18Therefore comfort one another with these words.